The A30 family of killer whales in the Johnstone Strait area, on the coast of British Columbia. Courtesy of Orcalab - www.orcalab.org.
Two such organizations are the Ocean Research and Education
Society (ORES) and OrcaLab, which study two of Canada's
well-known whale populations: the northern resident orcas of B.C.,
and the minke whales of the St. Lawrence-Saguenay region.
Orcalab
OrcaLab is a small, land-based whale research station on Hanson
Island in the waters of the inside passage of northern Vancouver
Island in B.C. It was founded in 1970 by Dr. Paul Spong, a devoted
early whale campaigner who inspired the first Greenpeace whaling
campaign. The work of OrcaLab is centred around the philosophy that
it is possible to study wild animals without interfering with their
lives or habitat. A network of hydrophones, positioned around the
orcas' core habitat, helps monitor their movements day and night,
year round, whenever orcas are in the area. Supplementing the
acoustic data are visual sightings of orcas as they pass OrcaLab,
and reports from other researchers and whale watchers during the
summer season. Collectively, this information has enabled OrcaLab
to compile a comprehensive history of the northern resident orca
community since 1970.
Since 1994, OrcaLab has also operated a video monitoring station
on Cracroft Point in Johnstone Strait. Located adjacent to a kelp
forest, its purpose is the unobtrusive collection of surface and
underwater images of orcas and other ocean life. Between 2000 and
2005 OrcaLab and Japan's NTT Data corporation brought the everyday
beauty of the orcas' lives to the internet via a live webcast (www.orca-live.net) which
attracted an audience from more than 70 countries around the world.
An audio version of this webcast continues to stream OrcaLab's
acoustic data live to the internet.
OrcaLab will also be closely observing the orcas over the coming
months and years to evaluate the impacts of the 2007 diesel spill
in Robson Bight. To learn more about the work of OrcaLab visit www.orcalab.org
About the whales
The Northern Resident orca whales of British Columbia are
designated as threatened under Canada's Species at Risk Act
and, along with the endangered southern resident orca population,
have been the focus of a recovery plan initiated by the Department
of Fisheries and Oceans to assess the threats to the species. Orcas
have become icons of the West Coast and are intriguing to
researchers for their communal and cooperative lifestyle.
ORES
The Ocean Research and Education Society (ORES) was founded by
the Canadian zoologist Ned Lynas in 1978. The non-profit
organization, based in Les Bergeronnes, Quebec, is dedicated to the
study of free living rorqual whales (blue, finback, humpback and
minke) visiting the summer feeding ground of the St. Lawrence
estuary in Eastern Canada, some 800 kilometres from the open
Atlantic. Under the supervision of the Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans and Parks Canada (Parc Marin du
Saguenay-Saint-Laurent) the lead researcher Ursula Tscherter
focuses on the minke whales that concentrate each summer in these
protected waters. Scientific data is collected on the long-term
distribution, population dynamics, habitat use, feeding ecology and
photo-identification of these poorly known marine mammals, which
are the main target of today's whaling industry. Biologists,
students and volunteers from around the world join the field
courses offered by ORES to help collect scientific data by applying
non-invasive or minimally intrusive methods. Today, ORES maintains
the most comprehensive photo-identification catalogue in the world,
holding more than 300 identified individuals, some with sighting
histories of 15 years or more. Each summer 100 to 150 individual
whales are sighted on up to 50 different days.
Based on the identification of individual animals, ORES has
shown that minke whales concentrate in certain areas and develop
strong preferences for certain habitats and even feeding sites. For
instance, since 2000, several well-known individuals have moved
into the Saguenay fjord where they have adapted their feeding
strategies to the predominant and unique physical conditions which
differ strongly from the open waters of the estuary. These
specialists have developed novel feeding techniques not used in the
adjacent waters and which have not, so far, been documented
elsewhere in the world. They apply manoeuvres to first entrap (head
slaps, under water exhales, and circles) and eventually to engulf
their prey in different body planes (oblique, lateral or ventral).
During such ventral manoeuvres, minkes often expose their genital
slits which allowed determining the sex of more than 40 animals,
all of which were females. This supports the general belief that
minke whales segregate by sex in their northern feeding grounds,
where males distribute in deeper offshore waters and females and
juveniles concentrate in coastal waters. Coastal waters have the
highest concentrate of the minke's prey but also the highest rate
of human activity. Thus, female minke whales and their offspring
are highly exposed to negative human-caused impacts such as
overexploitation of their prey species, entanglements, boat
collisions, chemical and noise pollution, and climate change.
ORES is dedicated to work towards a better understanding of the
lives of minke whales through scientific research which will
hopefully lead to international conservation efforts to protect
these fascinating marine mammals and the ecosystems they live in.
The extensive knowledge gained is not only shared with the
scientific community but also the public in order to raise
international awareness and to make minke whales well-known and
beloved. Visit www.ores.org to
learn more about research results, course programs and to view
unique photographs of the whales of the St. Lawrence.
About the whales
Although minke whales are found throughout the world's oceans,
they are not often studied or well understood. Minke whales are of
interest because they are the primary target of commercial whale
hunts and though the population found within the ORES study region
is not targeted, many questions remain about whether minkes in
these waters could migrate to hunting grounds.